When a silver halide photographic material is color-developed after being exposed to light, a color developing agent such as an aromatic primary amine is oxidized, and the color developing agent thus oxidized reacts with a dye-forming coupler to form a color image. In general, the color reproduction in this method is accomplished by the subtractive process. In order to reproduce blue, green and red colors, images of yellow, magenta and cyan, which are complementary to these colors, respectively, are formed. As cyan dye-forming couplers, phenols or naphthols are often used.
Ideally speaking, a cyan image produced from a cyan coupler should absorb red light alone. In general, however, such a cyan image usually also absorbs some green light and blue light.
In order to avoid such side absorption, a masking process using a colored coupler has been put into practical use in the art.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,458,012 discloses a color photographic material which provides a cyan color image having an improved fastness. However, this color photographic material is disadvantageous in that when it comprises both a colored coupler and a cyan coupler, it cannot form a sufficiently high density cyan color image when a treatment process comprising a bleaching step using a bleaching agent having weak oxidizing power is employed.
In recent years, color photographic materials have been required to provide a higher sensitivity and picture quality. Furthermore, the excellent photographic properties such as high sensitivity and picture quality must be accomplished not only by using the best development process, but also by using a development process comprising various steps using various kinds of treatment solution or using the treatment solution exhausted due to running. More particularly, the desired color photographic materials must provide a sufficiently high density cyan color image even when subjected to bleaching with a bleaching agent having weak oxidizing power (e.g., contaminated Fe(III)-EDTA and persulfate solutions).